AGAINST THE ODDS:Vinny searches for familiar faces as he drifts between here and there

VINNY FITZPATRICK’S first thoughts were that he had died and gone to heaven. Naturally enough, he didn’t have any personal experience to draw on but from what he could make out, he had exchanged the mortal life for an eternal one. He looked around for a sighting of his ol’ man, Finbarr, or his Ma, Bridie, but all he could make out was a brilliant white, so dazzling that it was almost blinding.

He felt his folks must be about somewhere, God too, Saint Peter, Angel Gabriel, and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all. So this was it, he thought to himself; the great stable in the sky, where all was white, warm and silent.

That he couldn’t move his body was no shock, because after all he no longer had a body; all he possessed was a soul, and one that wasn’t as pure as the driven snow either, if truth be told.

But that he was able to engage his brain came as a welcome surprise, as it wasn’t something the Christian Brothers in Joey’s had drilled into him all those years ago. “If this is heaven, maybe it’s not so bad after all,” he thought to himself before the white turned to darkness and he drifted off.

It was Tuesday morning, the opening day of the Cheltenham Festival, a sporting shrine Vinny had come to know like the back of his pudgy hand.

In his youth, he’d been there many times as a punter, occasionally a fearless one, and almost always as a half-plastered one.

More recently, he had preferred to watch the racing unfold from the comfort of Foley’s pub in Clontarf where he was regarded as the Prestbury Park Philosopher for his uncannily accurate observations about what would unfold.

Vinny’s ability to punch holes in the prospects of favourites and to highlight lively each-way outsiders was legendary, even if he had rarely followed his own advice.

This year, there would be no Cheltenham for the 52-year-old bus driver. Indeed, the odds against him seeing out the Festival continued to fluctuate. But at least they were a damn sight more encouraging than they had been.

Like the horse which finds a leg after clipping the birch at 35 miles per hour and somehow stays upright, Vinny was defying medical logic in his fight for life. Given his weight (excessive), age (middle) and physical condition (appalling), Vinny should have been in the knacker’s yard before now. That he wasn’t was a source of amazement to the doctors and medical team at Beaumont Hospital, and a beacon of light for his beloved wife, Angie, who had run out of tears over the past fortnight.

The first coronary had been seismic enough to topple an elephant; the second after-shock was almost as severe, yet somehow the big man had refused to buckle.

He had been unconscious for a fortnight, during which he had been given the last rites, before rallying sufficiently to allow the doctors perform an emergency quadruple bypass.

The surgery had left him vulnerable to attack, and the stroke, when it happened, was not unexpected. How much damage it had done, no one could say for sure. All they could tell Angie was that her husband was critical but stable.

The husband in question had no idea what was going on around him. As far as he knew, and he didn’t know an awful lot, he had popped his clogs and had been taken to a better place, where, in time, Angie would join him.

Stirring from the depths of unconsciousness, Vinny thought of Angie. He missed her and knew he wouldn’t see her in heaven for a very long time. That thought made him sad and caused him to blink involuntarily, an action for which there would be considerable consequences later.

As he blinked, the whiteness shimmered and he saw something else, a blue sky. Blue was always his colour. His beloved Everton played in royal blue, not a light wish-washy blue like Man City, Coventry or Cambridge University – how anyone could wear those powder puff colours was beyond him.

He wondered would he meet any Evertonians in heaven. His Da was a Toffee, uncle Seanie too.

He’d like to see Seanie again, to ask him about the time he saw Dixie Deans play for Sligo Rovers, and how he’d shared a bus going to Goodison Park with Peter Farrell and Tommy Eglinton. Every Saturday, he was sent round to Eggo’s butchers in Dollymount for 2lbs of sausages and 1lb pound of rashers. “Maybe I’ll get to meet Eggo while I’m here,” he thought to himself. “Jeepers, isn’t heaven a quare aul place altogether.” It was then something curious happened. The silence was broken by a noise. He didn’t know what it was or where it was coming from but he definitely heard something.

Vinny didn’t particularly warm to the sound which, he felt, was not unlike the voice of someone talking under water. It was slow, deep, muffled and utterly unintelligible, a bit like one of his old man’s vinyl records of Nat King Cole being played at the wrong speed. At that moment, around half past one in the afternoon, just as the starter was calling the horses to order for the opening race of the Cheltenham Festival, a chill feeling washed over Vinny Fitzpatrick.

If he was seeing, hearing and had feelings; how could all this be happening if he was in heaven? For a moment, there was clarity. Maybe, he wasn’t a gonner after all. Maybe he wasn’t even in a holding bay en route to the great staircase in the sky. Maybe, just maybe, there was life in the old dog yet.

But where was he? What was this place, with its shimmering white, brilliant blue and noisy babble he couldn’t decipher? Why couldn’t he see properly? Why couldn’t he hear? Why couldn’t he move? Angie would know; she always did. She could explain everything. But where was she? As Dunguib carried the hopes of Irish racing fans into the coliseum of the Cotswolds, Vinny Fitzpatrick suddenly felt afraid, terribly afraid.

Bet of the week

1pt e.w. Dave’s Dream in Jewson Novices Chase at Cheltenham (14/1, William Hill)

Vinny’s Bismarck

1pt Lay Alaivan in Triumph Hurdle (4/1 general, liability 4pts)